Nets have home game vs. Wall St.

Four months ago, Goldman Sachs assured that all financing would be in place for a $950 million professional basketball arena in Brooklyn by today.

Bruce Ratner, owner of the New Jersey Nets and developer of the $4 billion Atlantic Yards project that included the arena, said he was "inches away from completing the deal."

That was before prestigious investment firms started to fall and credit markets went into full-scale panic, triggering a financial crisis on Wall Street unseen since the Great Depression.

Yesterday, a spokesman for Goldman Sachs offered only a "No comment" when asked about the financing for the arena, fueling persistent doubts about the viability of Ratner's plan, which has been systematically downscaled and delayed since it was rolled out more than four years ago.

The latest setback came Monday, when Ratner said that ongoing legal disputes had again pushed back the groundbreaking for the arena. Originally slated to open in 2006, and most recently in 2010, the Nets' new home will now not be ready before 2011.

For his part, Ratner still sounds resolute.

"Atlantic Yards will be built and it will create thousands of needed jobs and affordable homes," Ratner said in a prepared statement. "This is all the more important as our city and country confront one of the most difficult economic downturns in history."

Atlantic Yards -- 16 skyscrapers, an 18,000-seat arena for the Nets, and thousands of apartments at a site at the corner of Flatbush and Atlantic avenues -- has been delayed by a string of legal challenges and questions about financing.

That leaves the Nets playing in an aging arena in the Meadowlands for at least the next three years, perpetuating competition with the Prudential Center hockey arena in Newark.

The latest delay also may complicate the $400 million naming-rights deal with Barclays Bank, which was expected to help offset the cost of the arena, according to published reports. The deal with Barclays was contingent on Ratner's financing for the project to be in place by the end of November.

A New York appellate court last week refused to dismiss a lawsuit by nine property owners in the footprint of the project, who are challenging the use of eminent domain. The court rejected a motion to throw out the case by the Empire State Development Corp., whose spokesman, Warner Johnston, declined comment.

Opponents in Brooklyn object to both the project's size and the state's use of eminent domain to make way for the project.

Candace Carponter, legal director of the group Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, claimed that the Wall Street crisis, pending court case and questions about tax-exempt bonds mean the project may never be built.

"The plan is now in doubt," she said in a statement.

Lawrence Swift, a partner at Troutman Sanders, a Manhattan law firm that specializes in sports facility financing and other large transactions, said the use of tax-exempt bonds could make or break the Atlantic Yards arena.

The meltdown on Wall Street, he said, has prompted major banks to charge high fees that dramatically raise the cost of conventional loans. However, tax-exempt bonds backed by the city and state would be attractive to wealthy investors looking to exit the volatile stock market.

"It could go ahead; the financing could be there," Swift said. "You also have people buying into it for PR reasons to support the city or concept."

Ratner is also awaiting a critical Internal Revenue Service ruling on whether the arena is eligible for $800 million in tax-exempt bonds to finance its construction, according to Atlantic Yards officials.